Mentor: Alexa Dunn - She was a former writer for a very popular magazine. I wanted someone who would be able to assist me with the feel of my blog and making sure it overall looked presentable.

Summary: My capstone is a blog, SincerelyDejah.com, where I can show my ideas, opinion, things I’ve learned, and tips on skincare, haircare, and lifestyle related things.

Abstract: For my capstone I decided to create a blog related to skincare, haircare, and lifestyle things. I want to be a dermatologist so that’s where the skincare aspect of my blog comes into play. While learning about skincare, I also learned about haircare. Originally I thought the blog would only be skincare and haircare related, but I found myself also really enjoying writing about lifestyle too. To me, my blog is a reflection of everything I am curious or have any thoughts about. Throughout this year it has turned into a place where I can really share my ideas and what I’ve learned to help others. That was the goal from the beginning. My blog has has been a very useful tool in sparking conversations with different people about topics that I love. I plan on continuing my blog throughout college and using it as a possible way to network with people as I have been.

After getting business cards, I realized that I didn’t actually know how to use them. I hadn’t spoken with any professionals about the steps you take after getting the business cards. My initial plan was just to walk around the city and see how many people I can hand the cards to. This website helped me change that. It mentioned that when you do this, the likely hood of the person actually reading the card is slim to none, let a lone them actually checking out your website. Instead, it recommends that you spark a conversation with someone and give your card to them at the end of the conversation once you see that they are a bit more interested.

There are many people that inspired me to decide to do this blog. Sammi from beautycrush.co.uk has been one of those people. I have watched her for the past few years and continue to look through her blog. She is always professional. I also like the simplistic layout of her blog and really kept that in mind when creating my blog. It was just a lot easier this way to see a model for something that I could want to see.

The first idea that this blog shows me has been a great addition to my blog. The key to success with any blog is to make sure that the readers and viewers also enjoy. This website recommends that you make sure you listen to the audience and get their response. I made a google form that is linked on my blog that helps me keep track of feedback. I have gotten some great suggestions through this and new ideas for videos. I also noticed a spark in views after I began doing this.

I spoke with the dermatologist that inspired me to get into the field. He was saying that one of the hardest things about the trade is getting your name out there. By being younger than most people, it is very hard for me to make sure that people take me seriously. Also, my name isn’t something that people just know, it isn’t a common or well known name. The reason why I made the blog was to kind of get my food in the door. However, he recommended that I make business cards to make myself look more professional to others. This helped out a lot with getting different age groups to look at my blog and videos.

Similarly to beautycrush, Estee from essibutton.com has influenced my blog content a lot as well. The design of her blog is also incredibly simplistic but her content especially is amazing. I make a point to come up with as many ideas for my blog as possible but when i get stuck on a new type of video to do I check out her blog for some inspiration regarding future posts. Some of the posts on her blog such as “Drugstore Favorites” or “ Monthly Hits and Misses” are things I plan on doing within my blog. They are things that I personally like watching and feel that other people will enjoy as well. I also make sure to mention her if I get an idea from her.

This was another site that helped me realize how to truly distribute business cards. One thing about this side is that it gets edited! They update the information frequently if they think of new tips for it so I constantly look back on this site for ways to improve my technique of distributing business cards. This site has given me ideas such as writing on the back of the business card to give it more of a personal touch. For each card I have been writing a DIY recipe or quick tip and people have been responding well to it so far.

I got some feedback after the first few month of creating my blog about the quality. The person was saying that they enjoyed the quality but to get more people to watch, they would recommend that I get a better camera. I took that advice to heart and was able to upgrade to the canon rebel t3i for my birthday. I had had a smaller dslr before so i understood the basics but this camera was a lot more complicated because it offered a lot more. This video helped a lot with understanding the basic buttons and things you use every time you work with the camera.

I am very passionate about spreading awareness about skincancer. I constantly check the skin cancer foundation site for more information about research that is being done and things to that nature. This also helped me to realize that my blog isn’t just about acne or eczema but about spreading awareness for something as serious as skin cancer. I am doing a series on sunscreen and homemade natural products become of the dangers of skin cancer.

Treat, James R. “Personal Email.” Email. 23 Jan 2014.

This source was my Dermatologist. He was the person that inspired me to get into the field. I started emailing him at the beginning of January. He has helped me develop some things that I wanted to showcase in my blog. He has also given me advice on the field and how to market yourself. I have made business cards because of our conversations. He also emailed me about things to do in regards to things to do in my undergraduate years.

Wordpress is a blogging site. I have found other blogs for inspiration through this site but I also have my actual website through this blog. It is very easy to use and get adjusted to. I also was able buy my domain name through this website so that I didn’t have to worry about the long name. It is very affordable and provides wonderful free options for different website layouts. Also, I would like to make my own website from scratch and this is one of the few sites where I would be able to code directly onto the site without going through a lot of trouble with a domain name and such.

While my goal with my capstone was to have a blog so that every post I did didn’t have to be about the same thing or a video, I still ended up using youtube as another main outlet that I had to design. Uploading movies directly to Wordpress can be extremely difficult so I just started using youtube as my way to upload videos. The people on youtube have given me a lot of inspiration. Also, more people have been able to find out about my blog have been through this site. I am able to target different types of learning audiences.